One subreddit asks Ellen Pao to resign, another compares her to fascist dictatorships.

On Wednesday, reddit said that it would actively ban subreddits that users reported as being harassing in nature. At the same time, reddit administrators Jessica Moreno, head of community and support; Ellen Pao, interim CEO; and Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of reddit, said that they had shut down five subreddits that had been egregiously flouting the site's new rules against harassment.

The company has not moved to ban any of the subreddits targeting Pao, the two most prominent of which have over 5,000 subscribers. (While 5,000 subscribers isn't a lot, reddit administrators said on Wednesday that four of the five subreddits they banned had fewer than 5,000 subscribers.) The first, r/PaoYongYang, says it exists to “only post things that compare Ellen Pao to North Korea, or other fascist dictatorships.” The other, r/PaoMustResign, lists a link to a petition to oust Pao as interim CEO. Dozens of less-populated subreddits exist directing similar vitriol at the CEO.

The subreddits are rife with racist and offensive comments, underlining how hard it will be for reddit to rein in its “anything goes” attitude that made the site as popular as it is today. Still, as reddit gets bigger, that permissive attitude becomes a liability. When a subreddit was created last year for sharing stolen nude celebrity photos, the site's then-chief executive Yishan Wong banned it because it was too difficult to keep up with the takedown requests stemming from photos with copyright violations and underage subjects.

Ironically, r/PaoMustResign posted a new comment late last night asking its commenters to tone down the harassing posts so it can focus on getting signatures for its petition to replace Pao. Titled "This Sub is Turning Serious" the subreddit moderator wrote:

No more pictures please, no more raging-hate. We don't need that anymore, what we need know is the raise awareness and try to stop her as peacefully as we can, being irrational and acting like trolls will not help us now.

We won't be removing any post unless it breaks the rules of the wiki. So your post are still safe feel free to keep posting memes. We don't want to be Pao here, even if we are trying to get people to take us more seriously.

Removing Meme's, we are adding more and more to the rules on the wiki to help define this.

Calls for someone to resign after making a decision you disagree with is harassment now [with regards to the title]? Ok...

As an aside, I don't really care, as I don't visit reddit as a thing, the only interaction I have is a specific subreddit that seems to have avoided any of this drama and is simply a much better source of info than the official forums (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/).

If your definition of "harassment" includes setting up a forum which the target can easily ignore if they wish, I think you have an overly broad definition of harassment. Harassment requires more than just criticizing someone in a forum, even if it is immature criticism.

Calls for someone to resign after making a decision you disagree with is harassment now [with regards to the title]? Ok...

As an aside, I don't really care, as I don't visit reddit as a thing, the only interaction I have is a specific subreddit that seems to have avoided any of this drama and is simply a much better source of info than the official forums (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/).

Oh, if only they stopped at calls to resign. I've seen everything from racial slurs to photoshopping her into porn to trying to Google-bomb her name to images of Hitler.

Asking Pao as the CEO to resign after making a decision a subset of users do not like sounds more like fair criticism than out right harassment. There is a line between harassment and criticism but more often I'm hearing the terms used synonymously to drive a different narrative.

First they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a pedophile.

Then they came for the rapists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a rapist.

Then they came for the cyberbullies, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a cyberbully .Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Oh come on. We're not talking about a political belief, or a racial characteristic like the poem which you've mutilated and missused aludes to. We're talking about a completely bad faith act with no redeeming characteristics.

I don't know how to feel about this, honestly. The subs removed definitely should go, but honestly, how many people get on Reddit for a... Slightly less terrible 4Chan experience? I mean, I'm not your average user maybe. I don't find laughs on damnlol. I like things that are dark, but not just "aaarrgf minorities!!" So there are subreddits for that. These subreddits are, unquestionably, offensive as hell. But not harassing anyone. My fear, is where will they draw the line? When there's no blatant harrasment? Or where it's a family-friendly site? Because, man, I freaking love the Rule34 sub. Just the reactions on my friends face when they see courage the cowardly dog, yano? Anyways, I hope she does right and trims the site, but I'm worried she'll give it a whole new style.

A small number have created offensive subreddits targeting Pao, with highly-upvoted posts that seem to fall definitively into reddit's previously-stated rules against harassment. But Pao is a high-profile and controversial figure, especially in the aftermath of her unsuccessful jury trial against former employer Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination. Removing these subreddits could be seen as removing purposely offensive protest, the Washington Post notes.

I don't see the contradiction. So these subreddits are "purposely offensive"? Because the other ones were only accidentally offensive? I don't think so.

Is the argument that the offense here is meant to be ironic for the sake of protest, and not actually for the sake of offense? The content doesn't seem to support that.

Certainly I look at the coverage of reddit and think that it's something I have no interest in participating in. If they want to change reddit, they will have to apply the policy across the board.

First they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a pedophile.

Then they came for the rapists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a rapist.

Then they came for the cyberbullies, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a cyberbully .Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Oh come on. We're not talking about a political belief, or a racial characteristic like the poem which you've mutilated and missused aludes to. We're talking about a completely bad faith act with no redeeming characteristics.

I was being sarcastic you moron. Fat people hate was full of idiotic bullies who think they should have the right to harass people. Good riddance. They can find some other shithole on the internet to spew their crap.

Reddit is delusional if they think removing subreddits will fix their harassment issues. They are doing this as a band-aid, because banning individual trolls does nothing due to the fact that it's so easy to create another account. You simply can't have a completely anonymous community without people taking advantage of that. If they want some control, then they need to at least require email addresses. What they are doing now is just an awkward compromise for everyone.

Why do these assholes think it's their god-given right to harass people or post terrible shit on a privately owned website? Comparing mods to Hitler. Idiots. If I was in charge the purge would be much larger in scale.

As an infrequent reddit user, the site the way I use it has been completely useless the last couple of days.

If this is how these users react to getting called out on their BS then it is probably best that they find somewhere else.

And hopefully this is the start of the removal of a lot of the subreddits that shouldn't be on the site. I don't see how not getting all the bad subreddits at once means that none of them should be removed. A partial solution is better than none.

Asking Pao as the CEO to resign after making a decision a subset of users do not like sounds more like fair criticism than out right harassment. There is a line between harassment and criticism but more often I'm hearing the terms used synonymously to drive a different narrative.

I would agree with that. a Subredit to compare everything he says/does with North Korea though?

That's not really harassment, that's just bad criticism. Yeah, it's stupid and hurts their own cause by making it hard to take them seriously, but harassment really would require something beyond that. It might be harassment if this were someone who wasn't a public figure, but in general criticism of a public figure (even if it's dumb and hyperbolic) doesn't qualify as harassment in most people's books.

Twitter updates its harassment policy, the trolls do nothing. Reddit updates its harassment policy, they go all in with the racist and sexist attacks. So this is about ethics in harassment policies, I suppose? The race and gender of the CEOs of these companies have nothing to do with it, right?